Interviews

FIR Interviews

Tuesday, October 30, 2012

FIR Interview: Cisco Systems Social Media Listening Team

imageCisco Systems unveiled its Social Media Listening Center at its San Jose, California-based Executive Briefing Center on October 24. The six interactive touchscreens display a variety of data visualizations—such as heat maps and word clouds—that help present a picture of the social media conversation as it relates to Cisco Systems. What visitors see, however, is just a glimpse at the processes and systems that Cisco has developed and deployed throughout the organization.

In this FIR interview, co-host Shel Holtz chats with Jeanette K. Gibson, Charlie Treadwell and Nancy Rivas about the listening command center—both the part that’s visible to visitors and what happens behind the scenes, how subject matter experts are volunteering to address issues the listening team identifies, the means by which Cisco is customizing data visualization for different parts of the company, and how Cisco’s experience with digital signage is taking its listening center to a level beyond those we have seen from other organizations.

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About our Conversation Partners

imageJeanette Gibson, Senior Director, Social & Digital Marketing, leads the Global Social & Digital Marketing team at Cisco. Her team is responsible for the company’s global digital brand presence on cisco.com, social web sites and mobile environments. Her team consists of digital content & site strategy for cisco.com, social media marketing and digital innovation.

Her team is responsible for setting Cisco’s social marketing strategy and success metrics and driving alignment, governance and best practice sharing across the company. This includes overseeing the creation of Cisco branded social sites, such as the company’s social media hub (socialmedia.cisco.com)  the corporate blogging platform (blogs.cisco.com), communities (communities.cisco.com), YouTube (www.youtube.com/cisco), LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, Slideshare and whatever else new pops up!

Gibson founded Cisco’s social media marketing organization in 2009 and built its social media center of excellence, which has successfully trained thousands of employees to engage with customers/partners in social media and helped Cisco earn #1 B2B company on Twitter via ComScore.  She also created a Social Media Advisory Council to help guide and direct company-wide social media strategy and governance.

Previously, Gibson led Cisco’s New Media Communications group where she was responsible for extending Cisco’s leadership and innovation with new media and overseeing the vision and direction of Cisco’s award winning online newsroom, News@Cisco (newsroom.cisco.com).

Prior to working with the News@Cisco team, Gibson ran the Corporate Technology PR team at Cisco where she was responsible for promoting Cisco’s technology vision and strategy and securing top-tier business press for Cisco and its senior executive team.

Prior to joining Cisco in 1998, Gibson worked for a start-up, PointCast, which pioneered push technology for delivering news broadcasts directly to users’ desktops. Gibson helped launch the company in 1995 and managed its external reputation via media and analyst relations activity. Prior to PointCast, Gibson held various account management positions at leading public relations firms, Miller Communications (now Weber Shandwick) and Copithorne & Bellows (now Porter Novelli).

Gibson is a founding member of the Social Media Business Council (www.socialmedia.org). Cisco.com has received numerous awards including Best B2B website by SiteIQ and the company was recognized as #1 B2B company using Twitter 2nd year in a row, according to ComScore. Gibson holds a B.A. in Communications from the University of California at Santa Barbara.

Follow Jeanette on Twitter as @jeanetteg.

imageCharlie Treadwell is a Social and Digital Media Marketing Manager at Cisco. In this role he develops strategies to leverage social media listening and measurement to generate business intelligence and infuse marketing programs with social intelligence and insights. With over 8 years of digital and social experience, Charlie has experienced first hand the transition for B2B companies into the social era, and is helping to lead Cisco to become a fully engaged social enterprise.

Charlie leads a team of skilled professionals that manage Cisco’s Social Media Listening Center. This team enables social media teams across Cisco listen to conversations, engages with customers, partners and influencers, and measures our marketing programs across the social web.

Follow Charlie on Twitter at CharlieAtCisco.

imageNancy Rivas she is a Social Media Marketing Manager on the Listening and Analytics team.

Her career at Cisco has included positions in Analyst Relations and as an Editor for The Network in Corporate Communications. Nancy’s professional experience includes more than 12 years in public, corporate and community relations. Prior to Cisco she worked at Nortel Networks managing their Community Relations program. Nancy also worked as a Spanish-speaking media representative and legislative correspondent for local government.

She holds a Bachelor of Arts degree in Political Science.

Follow Nancy on Twitter at nrrivas07.

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Share your comments or questions about this podcast, or suggestions for future interviews, in the FIR FriendFeed Room. You can also email us at fircomments@gmail.com; call the Comment Line at +1 206 338 7960 (North America), +44 20 3239 9082 (Europe), or Skype: fircomments; comment at Twitter: twitter.com/FIR. You can email your comments, questions and suggestions as MP3 file attachments, if you wish (max. 3 minutes / 5Mb attachment, please!). We’ll be happy to see how we can include your audio contribution in a show.

To receive all For Immediate Release podcasts including the weekly Hobson & Holtz Report, subscribe to the full RSS feed.

This FIR Interview is brought to you with Lawrence Ragan Communications, serving communicators worldwide for 35 years. Information: www.ragan.com.

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Posted by shel on 10/30 at 09:57 AM
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Thursday, September 27, 2012

FIR Interview: FeedBlitz CEO Phil Hollows on RSS and the future of Feedburner

FeedBlitzIn May, Google quietly announced it would shut down the API for FeedBurner, the most popular tool for managing and measuring RSS feeds. While the service will continue to process RSS feeds—only third-party apps that use the service will be affected—Google has been quiet about the service’s future, telling TechCrunch as recently as September 24 that the company had nothing to announce. Meanwhile, speculation is rampant that the long-neglected service for which Google paid $100 million back in 2007 will eventually be shuttered, leading many to explore alternatives and others to take action, migrating their feeds to alternative services.

One of those services is FeedBlitz, “The All-In-One Solution for Email & Social Media Marketing Automation.” Since concerns arose over how long FeedBurner will remain viable, FeedBlitz has been marketing itself as (among other things) a reliable FeedBurner alternative, even providing a step-by-step guide to importing your existing FeedBurner subscribers to your new FeedBlitz account. In this FIR interview, co-hosts Neville Hobson and Shel Holtz speak with FeedBlitz founder and CEO Phil Hollows about the vital role RSS continues to play, the situation with FeedBurner and the various options (not limited to FeedBlitz) available to bloggers and others who rely on RSS feeds.

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About our Conversation Partner

Phil HollowsPhil Hollows is the Founder and CEO of FeedBlitz, an email and social media marketing automation service and premium FeedBurner alternative.

Building on his high technology experience, consulting and marketing leadership since graduating from Oxford University in 1987 (The Queen’s College), Phil started what became FeedBlitz in 2005. Phil is the author of the free FeedBurner Migration Guide, and the e-book List Building for Bloggers.

Before creating FeedBlitz, Phil was Vice President Product Marketing for enterprise network security management company OpenService (now LogMatrix), and before that he was the Vice President of Technology at the web testing company RadView Software.

Phil’s international career also includes being a Director at enterprise workforce management software leader Kronos, and Managing Consultant for the US office of UK-based niche executive financial consultancy Metapaxis. He has a post-graduate diploma in Accounting and Finance from the UK’s ACCA.

Follow Phil on Twitter as @phollows.

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Share your comments or questions about this podcast, or suggestions for future interviews, in the FIR FriendFeed Room. You can also email us at fircomments@gmail.com; call the Comment Line at +1 206 338 7960 (North America), +44 20 3239 9082 (Europe), or Skype: fircomments; comment at Twitter: twitter.com/FIR. You can email your comments, questions and suggestions as MP3 file attachments, if you wish (max. 3 minutes / 5Mb attachment, please!). We’ll be happy to see how we can include your audio contribution in a show.

To receive all For Immediate Release podcasts including the weekly Hobson & Holtz Report, subscribe to the full RSS feed.

This FIR Interview is brought to you with Lawrence Ragan Communications, serving communicators worldwide for 35 years. Information: www.ragan.com.

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Posted by shel on 09/27 at 09:55 AM
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Friday, August 31, 2012

FIR Interview: Brian J. McNely on Instagram as a medium for image-power

Brian J. McNely, an assistant professor in the Writing, Rhetoric, and Digital Media program at the University of Kentucky, posted a pre-publication draft of a study he conducted on the use of Instagram to build an organization’s “image-power.” The methodology resulted in a classification schema for the kinds of images organizations post—a schema that could be useful as organizations continue to strategize their approach to social visual communication (also labeled “visual marketing”).

FIR co-hosts Neville Hobson and Shel Holtz spoke with McNely about his research and some of the conclusions he has reached. The actual research paper is available at the end of this post.

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About our Conversation Partner

imageBrian McNely is an Assistant Professor in the Writing, Rhetoric, and Digital Media program at the University of Kentucky. He primarily researches and teaches professional and technical communication in digital environments and research methods and methodologies. His empirical work is diverse, exploring professional communication genres and practices among software developers, playwrights, Roman Catholic Priests and parishioners, and media researchers, among others.

Brian’s recent work develops the notion of ambient research methods, a systematic, qualitative approach to the collection and analysis of ubiquitous social software data. In ambient research methods, social software genres are surfaced and traced as the infrastructural and coordinative work mediating the everyday practice of many contemporary knowledge workers.

Connect with Brian on his website—www.BrianJMcNely.com—and onTwitter at @bmcnely.

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Share your comments or questions about this podcast, or suggestions for future interviews, in the FIR FriendFeed Room. You can also email us at fircomments@gmail.com; call the Comment Line at +1 206 338 7960 (North America), +44 20 3239 9082 (Europe), or Skype: fircomments; comment at Twitter: twitter.com/FIR. You can email your comments, questions and suggestions as MP3 file attachments, if you wish (max. 3 minutes / 5Mb attachment, please!). We’ll be happy to see how we can include your audio contribution in a show.

To receive all For Immediate Release podcasts including the weekly Hobson & Holtz Report, subscribe to the full RSS feed.

This FIR Interview is brought to you with Lawrence Ragan Communications, serving communicators worldwide for 35 years. Information: www.ragan.com.

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The research paper that served as the fodder for today’s interview is available here:

Shaping Organizational Image-Power through Images: Case Histories of Instagram

Posted by shel on 08/31 at 01:20 PM
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Monday, August 20, 2012

FIR Interview: Giovanni Rodriguez on the launch of SocialxDesign

SocialxDesignGiovanni Rodriguez, one of the earliest communications practitioners to work in social media on behalf of clients, has launched a new social media consulting firm, SocialxDesign. The agency is an independent strategy firm that was developed as an incubator project at Eastwick, a technology communication agency where Rodriguez worked from 2002 to 2006.

SocialxDesign, according to an Eastwick press release, is “focused on helping businesses, government agencies and NGOs to remake themselves for the socially networked economy. Soxial x Design will enable organizations to grow, reduce costs and increase their market value by engaging and empowering people in their ecosystems—customers, employees, industry partners—to take an active part in remaking the enterprise.”

In this FIR interview, Giovanni talked with FIR co-host Shel Holtz about the new firm, how it’s structured and his vision for its future. He also talks about one of SocialxDesign’s inaugural clients, The White House.

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About our Conversation Partner

Giovanni RodriguezBefore launching Socia xDesign, Giovanni Rodriguez served as a senior member of the social-technology team at Deloitte Consulting, chief marketing officer for a publicly traded company, and managing partner of The Conversation Group (TCG), one of the first social-technology consulting firms.

Giovanni has consulted for numerous B2B leaders such as The New York Stock Exchange, SAP, Alcatel-Lucent, and Verizon Business, as well as leading consumer brands such as General Mills, Unilever, and Best Buy. He is also known for his work in positioning technology companies in transition, including FAST Search and Transfer (now Microsoft), Ribbit (now British Telecom), JAJAH (now Telefonica), and VMware, where he worked with the team that led the company’s entry into the enterprise software market (in 2000).

Giovanni is a founding fellow at the Society of New Communications Research (SNCR) and a board member at Latinos for Social Media (LATISM). He is a graduate of Princeton University and an MSc candidate at the University of London.

Connect with Giovanni on Twitter at @giorodriguez.

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Share your comments or questions about this podcast, or suggestions for future interviews, in the FIR FriendFeed Room. You can also email us at fircomments@gmail.com; call the Comment Line at +1 206 338 7960 (North America), +44 20 3239 9082 (Europe), or Skype: fircomments; comment at Twitter: twitter.com/FIR. You can email your comments, questions and suggestions as MP3 file attachments, if you wish (max. 3 minutes / 5Mb attachment, please!). We’ll be happy to see how we can include your audio contribution in a show.

To receive all For Immediate Release podcasts including the weekly Hobson & Holtz Report, subscribe to the full RSS feed.

This FIR Interview is brought to you with Lawrence Ragan Communications, serving communicators worldwide for 35 years. Information: www.ragan.com.

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Posted by shel on 08/20 at 03:51 PM
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Tuesday, August 07, 2012

FIR Interview: John Earnhardt on Cisco’s content portal, The Network

Cisco's Network Content PortalCisco Systems launched The Network about a year ago. At that time, we interviewed John Earnhardt, the communicator responsible for the site, about the goals and aspirations for the content portal that folded in the company’s former media center. A year later, FIR co-host Shel Holtz chats with John about the experience and results to date, including the use of The Network’s content by third parties. Of particular interest are two video series launched on the site, My Networked Life and Songo, a video series for the Korean market. John also talks about the use of freelance journalists to achieve the company’s brand journalism objectives.

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About our Conversation Partner

John EarnhardtJohn Earnhardt manages the social media team responsible for the “The Network: Cisco’s Technology News Site” and other corporate communications channels such as The Platform blog and Facebook page, Twitter @CiscoSystems (2010 B2B Twitterer of the Year), LinkedIn, Ustream and Flickr site. He also manages the corporate PR team, including CEO and CFO media strategy, legal, M&A, finance, op-eds, broadcast media strategy and executive media training. Follow on Twitter @urnhart. John was a finalist for PRWeek’s “PR Professional of the Year” Award for 2010.

Previously, he managed policy communications in Cisco’s Global Policy and Government Affairs department where he was responsible for using communications channels to advance Cisco’s state, federal and global public policy objectives. This is where he started the first blog for Cisco in 2005. He also handled media relations on public policy issues in addition to starting and managing Cisco’s political action committee. He joined Cisco in 1999 as Corporate Public Relations Manager in the Office of the President.

Prior to Cisco he was the Director of Media Relations for the National Association of Broadcasters in Washington, DC. Earnhardt previously worked for Senator Joseph R. Biden, the Senate Judiciary Committee and for the Presidential Defense Base Closure and Realignment Commission. In 1996, he worked for Vice President Al Gore doing press advance on the Clinton/Gore Presidential campaign.

John is married, has a young son and lives in Menlo Park, CA. He graduated from Wake Forest University with a BA in English and Philosophy.

Connect with John on Twitter: @urnhart.

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Share your comments or questions about this podcast, or suggestions for future interviews, in the FIR FriendFeed Room. You can also email us at fircomments@gmail.com; call the Comment Line at +1 206 338 7960 (North America), +44 20 3239 9082 (Europe), or Skype: fircomments; comment at Twitter: twitter.com/FIR. You can email your comments, questions and suggestions as MP3 file attachments, if you wish (max. 3 minutes / 5Mb attachment, please!). We’ll be happy to see how we can include your audio contribution in a show.

To receive all For Immediate Release podcasts including the weekly Hobson & Holtz Report, subscribe to the full RSS feed.

This FIR Interview is brought to you with Lawrence Ragan Communications, serving communicators worldwide for 35 years. Information: www.ragan.com.

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Posted by shel on 08/07 at 04:15 PM
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Tuesday, July 31, 2012

FIR Interview: IABC Executive Director Chris Sorek

IABC logoThe International Association of Business Communicators (IABC) welcomed Chris Sorek as its new executive director effective July 1. (Read the press release.) Sorek’s appointment follows a lengthy search to replace Julie Freeman, ABC, APR, who left the post after 10 years at the helm.

Founded in 1970, IABC provides a professional network of about 15,000 business communication professionals in over 80 countries. Members hold positions in a wide variety of communication positions ranging from public relations and employee communications to public affairs and community relations, employing strategic planning and management skills along with capabilities including writing, editing, photography, video production, and digital communication management.

In this FIR interview, co-hosts Neville Hobson and Shel Holtz talk with Sorek about what he has heard from IABC members, how he envisions the staff and board working together, the key areas of focus for the organization at the outset of his term, his views on membership growth outside of North America and a host of other topics.

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About our Conversation Partner

Chris SorekChristopher Sorek has a master’s degree in international marketing and communications and has worked on public information and humanitarian issues in Europe, Africa, Asia, and Latin America. He started his career as a journalist and editor for newspapers and magazines in the United States. He then turned to internal communication and political action committee activities for a large regional bank before moving to Unisys’s international public relations team. He was asked to join Ogilvy & Mather in 1987, where he headed offices in Taiwan and Singapore and helped develop the agency’s Asia-Pacific network before joining Cohn & Wolfe in New York to lead and manage global corporate clients.

In 2001, Sorek joined the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies in Geneva as head of communications. He returned to the private sector to work for SAP AG in Germany, De Beers, and the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development before joining Drinkaware as chief executive in 2008.

Connect with Chris on Twitter: @chrissorek.

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Share your comments or questions about this podcast, or suggestions for future interviews, in the FIR FriendFeed Room. You can also email us at fircomments@gmail.com; call the Comment Line at +1 206 338 7960 (North America), +44 20 3239 9082 (Europe), or Skype: fircomments; comment at Twitter: twitter.com/FIR. You can email your comments, questions and suggestions as MP3 file attachments, if you wish (max. 3 minutes / 5Mb attachment, please!). We’ll be happy to see how we can include your audio contribution in a show.

To receive all For Immediate Release podcasts including the weekly Hobson & Holtz Report, subscribe to the full RSS feed.

This FIR Interview is brought to you with Lawrence Ragan Communications, serving communicators worldwide for 35 years. Information: www.ragan.com.

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Posted by shel on 07/31 at 07:48 AM
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Monday, July 30, 2012

FIR Interview: Philip Sheldrake and Stephen Waddington on ‘Share This’

Share This"Social media has become an invaluable tool in my PR armoury by giving me a direct voice to speak directly to members of the media and the general public," says Lord Sugar. "This book is a useful guide to using social media effectively."

Gaining such a glowing endorsement for a business book from one of the UK’s most influential business leaders, media personalities and political advisers is no mean feat. It sets the focus well for Share This: The Social Media Handbook for PR Professionals from the CIPR.

Described as "a practical handbook to the biggest changes taking place in the media and its professions by the Chartered Institute of Public Relations’ Social Media Panel," Share This was conceived and written by more than 20 public relations practitioners representing a cross-section of public, private and voluntary sector expertise using many of the social tools and techniques that it addresses.

In this FIR Interview, co-host Neville Hobson discusses the book with Philip Sheldrake and Stephen Waddington, two of the central figures behind it and much of the CIPR’s proactive work in recent years to get social media on the agenda of CIPR members.

The wide-ranging conversation starts with both men’s perspectives on what the book is and who it’s aimed at. The discussion covers how the contributors were identified and brought in to the project, and looks at its editorial process focused on ‘the cloud,’ the challenges in managing such crowd-sourced content and how it all fitted with established traditional book-publishing processes at the publisher Wiley.

The two also offered their thoughts on the work of the CIPR’s Social Media Panel and what the future may hold.

Share This is published in the UK in July 2012 (in August 2012 in the US), in hardcopy and digital editions, and is available from Amazon and other booksellers.

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About our Conversation Partners

Philip SheldrakePhilip Sheldrake is a Chartered Engineer, technology consultant, author and public relations professional. He wrote The Business of Influence in 2011. He is a founding partner of Meanwhile, a main board director of Intellect and director of 6UK.

He is a founding member of the CIPR’s Social Media Panel and leads its policy group on campaign measurement and evaluation.

Philip’s expertise spans business strategy, IT and web strategy, product engineering and technology, management consultancy, public relations and social web analytics.

Connect with Philip on Twitter: @sheldrake.

Stephen WaddingtonStephen Waddington is a PR moderniser that has worked in the media and corporate communications since the rise of the internet and the dawn of digital media. He has helped brands such as the Associated Press, Cisco, The Economist, IBM, Tesco and Virgin Media Business to manage their reputations.

He is co-author of Brand Anarchy published in March 2012, and is editor of and contributor to Share This.

He is managing director of the award-winning Speed Communications launched in 2009, which has rapidly become one of the UK’s most prominent public relations agencies, working with clients across conventional, digital and owned media.

Stephen understands how the media landscape works online and offline and champions good practice as a writer, conference speaker and award winning-blogger. He is a CIPR Accredited Practitioner and member of the UK’s PRCA Council, CIPR Council and the CIPR Social Media Panel.

Stephen is also chairman of Admiral PR & Marketing, the regional agency based in Manchester and Newcastle. He is married with three children and splits his time between London and home on a small holding in rural Northumberland.

Connect with Stephen on Twitter: @wadds.

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Share your comments or questions about this podcast, or suggestions for future interviews, in the FIR FriendFeed Room. You can also email us at fircomments@gmail.com; call the Comment Line at +1 206 338 7960 (North America), +44 20 3239 9082 (Europe), or Skype: fircomments; comment at Twitter: twitter.com/FIR. You can email your comments, questions and suggestions as MP3 file attachments, if you wish (max. 3 minutes / 5Mb attachment, please!). We’ll be happy to see how we can include your audio contribution in a show.

To receive all For Immediate Release podcasts including the weekly Hobson & Holtz Report, subscribe to the full RSS feed.

This FIR Interview is brought to you with Lawrence Ragan Communications, serving communicators worldwide for 35 years. Information: www.ragan.com.

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Posted by neville on 07/30 at 12:40 AM
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